GREAT article!

I agree that it's hard to measure, but I don't think it's something owners & upper management (Your C-suite) will want to understand. They are high level people, and want to know how effectively you are spending THEIR money on marketing. Although I agree with you hole-heartedly, most owners & C-suite people aren't going to try to understand how difficult it is to get a cost per lease.

If you are spending money on a lead source where the supposed "cost per lease" is high - be prepared to explain quickly to your owners/managers/C-Suite why you want to continue to use that source. I have had regional managers quickly and effectively explain this and be able to keep their sources that would "appear" costly. The key is a quick, effective explanation. They don't want a long-winded explanation, and you don't want to bore them! Just state your point and move on. Hope that helps!

First off, I love the train wreck video you plugged in. Nice touch.

So here's my position. With most advertising there is going to be plenty of imperfection. New technology has allowed us to measure things in more detail that happen online, but offline it's always more of a challenge. The way I look at it, we measure these things for trends in marketing. While the data may not be perfect, overtime you can see trends. This is why consistency in marketing is important in my opinion. A one-off campaign will always be difficult to measure, but if you have a consistent program (regardless of precise recording of sources) you should begin to see trends.

Now, that said, I agree that we can have a tendency to give too much credit to the last source. But that is also why studying online traffic, email leads, and phone calls is an important metric in my mind as well. This can help solidify some type of traffic numbers.

So I believe measuring the cost per lease is still a very important metric, but it's important to look at the leads and clicks as well when studying your data. I want the most bang for my buck, and just measuring "leads" doesn't necessarily mean that is getting accomplished. And don't even get me started on Rent.com.

ou're exactly right about multiple touch points throughout the sales funnel, especially online. Which means that, even if your people *are* tracking lead sources effectively, it's still bad data ... that prospect probably saw you in seven other places before the one they remember when the leasing consultant asks the question in person, but you're only giving credit to the last source. And if, according to the prospect, that source is the property website, then you better be looking at your tracking data to see what site referred them and what keywords they entered to get to you.

In my mind, it's much more effective to look at overall ROI on your marketing spend. Steve Everett from Thies & Talle has an excellent presentation on ROI and marketing analytics here - http://j.mp/iaaudc. Cost per lead is a better metric than cost per lease, but you're still missing pieces ... you could turn off a source that is providing a high direct cost per lead, but come to find out later that that same source was very effective at driving lots of traffic to other sources further down the funnel. At AIM '10, one of the speakers suggested trying "dark period testing" -- turning off a source for a few weeks or months, and seeing how that impacts traffic and conversions. I think it's one of the best ways to tell whether a given source is really contributing to the cause.

Great thoughts ... I'm looking forward to seeing what others have to say about this.

Agree Mike. Dark period testing really can help tell a story and support trends. For example, we went dark on print about 3 years ago and saw no impact in our traffic. We did enhance our online efforts, but at 50% the cost of print. Huge savings.

However, what led us to going dark was the trend we were seeing in leads and leases going down attributed to the print ads.

Right now we're monitoring trends for traffic that come through from the ILS sites to our J.C. Hart websites. We're finding more and more people converting into physical traffic that visit our property sites, so we feel it's important that the ILSs help drive them there. Right now we're seeing that some ILSs do a much better job than others.

Bill--you do a great job of getting into some great subjects. Keep up the good work. The key is lead follow up. And Bill, in Feb of 2008, I performed a secret shop of your company's portfolio and tracked the agents that followed up. (Happy news for your firm--it was better than the industry average.) (Sad news for the industry--the industry average is 23%.)

The interesting part of all of this is the last post with regard to lead follow up. If any of you have been on the receiving end of my sales process, you know that I follow up with patient persistence. In the world of leasing apartments, though, you need to get that prospective renter while they are in the action mode of selecting a new apartment--like NOW. People do not send e-mails or call properties to see what the weather is like. They are looking for a new apartment, and the agent/property that gets them in the door the fastest has the greatest opportunity to win the lease. And, this is a zero-sum game. The renter is only going to rent one apartment. Consistent lead tracking and follow up allows you to win the lease.

If anyone that reads this would like a secret shop of their portfolio, just let me know. It would be my pleasure to perform one--gratis. The trick is not so much as lead generation as in lead follow up.